Google Plus

On a lighter note, I had the chance to check out Google Plus yesterday evening. All I can say is that it is Facebook Lite with a bit more integration into the (in my opinion) half hearted social features like Buzz that Google has been rolling out for the past year or two. The big differentiating feature I saw was that everyone is put in a circle, whether that be friends, family, acquaintances or something you define yourself (coworkers seem like a good choice). Everything you post, gets explicitly posted to a specific circle. At first I thought this was a little silly, as there were no hierarchies, but you could use this creatively to blast out messages to a group of people. Consider a “bowling league” circle, or a “close friend” circle, or a more transient “going to meet at the concert tonight” circle.

Overall, I wasn’t too impressed, but it is an early stage beta, and unlike Orkut, Google really seems to be throwing their weight behind this one, so we will see what happens.

One last thought- its scary how much Google knows about me, and its also scary how much Facebook knows about me- to combine those two knowledge bases together… you could know more about me than most of my friends do without even meeting me. I may avoid Google Plus if for only this reason.